The Worcestershire Rapids Matchday Experience for NatWest T20 Blast games during 2015 has again lived up to expectations according to the paying public.
Last summer only Nottinghamshire Outlaws of the 18 counties were deemed to be better that the Rapids at giving supporters what he or she wants when attending T20 Blast matches.
They scored an average of 8.5 points out of 10 per game – just 0.1 of a point better than the Rapids based on the results of a survey of more than 32,000 people who attended T20 Blast matches in 2014.
Now the Rapids overall average points tally per game has risen again this year according to figures up to and including the conclusion of the North Group programme.
The County took on board areas that people felt could be improved such as the time it was taking to access to the ground, queueing for food and beverages and the quality of the public address system at New Road.
All three areas have been significantly overhauled and upgraded – the latter with financial support from the Supporters' Association – and the results are there to see via the survey marks and feedback.
The average mark across all categories in the survey spanning the six completed group matches has risen to 8.6 marks out of 10 – enough to have finished top last year although the national outcome of the 2015 survey is still to be announced.
Spectators were asked to give marks out of 10 about many aspects of their experience – the view, atmosphere, access to ground, stewarding, toilets, seating, speed of queues, information announcements, retail and food and drink.
The surveys are automatically e-mailed out post match to people who have purchased tickets – and if supporters provide their feedback they go in to a draw to win 2016 Test match tickets.
Worcestershire Commercial Director Jon Graham said: "The most useful part of any research or evaluation is, yes it's nice to hear the good things, but it's also good to understand what we could do better.
"Last year a lot of the feedback was about the queueing time for food and beverages was sometimes a little bit too long, the PA announcements weren't overly clear, and access to the actual ground, because we were post development, was quite difficult.
"In the off season, just to combat all of those things, we've put in a new turnstile area in, we've invested in access control for scanning members cards and also Print at Home tickets which has really helped the queueing.
"With the help of the Supporters Association, we've had some monies to contribute towards the new PA system so a lot of the annoucements are a lot clearer.
"As far as the queueing for food and beverages, we moved where the Retail Experience was under the hotel and put a massive new bar in there and for our busiest game versus Birmingham we did more money there than any other area of the ground for beer."
